3d print show: Ultimaker

Nex event for today is the Ultimaker keynote. The speaker is Hank van Gils, the executive CEO and though he has not the same ease with the microphone as Bre Pettis, he makes a nice speech on the importance of 3d printing to distribute the production system.

The original RepRap project was interesting but difficult to sell, and the subsequent evolution made them more and more differentiated.

The Ultimaker remains an open source project, with the contribution of many individuals that push Ultimaker to his limits and to improve all the time: Florian Horsch with designs of objects that are incredibly accurate, Cardillac with metal-like filaments, Jordan Miller that studies how to make prints more and more detailed (in the picture on the left hand side is his finger!)

The community behind Ultimaker is important to know what is really needed, the Ultimaker is like the tools and raw materials that are needed to make an object starting from a recipe.

Iris van Herpen is another example of designers pushing the industries and not the other way around. She is a model and wants printing materials that are more comfortable to wear. The public drives the producer and not the other way around.

Another interesting note is on multimaterial printing, with the example of 3d printed glasses with incorporated lens. Not on the market yet but wait for them soon.

Obviously there is a part on 3d printing and medicine. A project with Jordan Miller to print blood vessels, kidneys are already being printed and a bionic ear based on DNA replicated cow skin that looks more natural than prosthetics. Things that are technically possible now (though the note on having to upgrade kids as soon as they are born is a bit unnerving…). This opens up a new horizon where people can really have spare parts printed for them.

The difference between digital world with 0000 and 11111 and biological world with CGGGAT is not that big maybe.

Ultimaker wants to make ideas immediately accessible and real, without having to pass through all the steps of mass production, making things costumizable and personal.

Short note on patents: patents for 20-25 years stop innovation and should be prohibited. This is why ultimaker wants open source and opened youmagine, a platform to share ideas. Cura, the slicing software, will be integrated in youmagine to make things easier and more straightforward. Though this is nice I can't avoid thinking it's still a budding copy of thingiverse….

Next a video (available on the ultimaker home page) where an architect uses an ultimaker all day long: to print a small robot for his kid, to check a house he is working on and finally to make a nice vase for the flowers he bought for his wife.

Not only Imagine it and make it, but also make it easy and make the world better